How to build your family tree
The tree is the spine of Kunbaa — every photo, story, event and chat hangs off the people on it. This is how to build it in the app, from one person to every generation you know.
Before you start
Open the Tree tab at the bottom of the app. The first time, the tree has one person on it: you. Everything below starts from a card — tap any person on the tree to open theirs.
1. Add your closest people first
Tap your own card, then Add. Pick the relationship — mother, father, sister, brother, spouse, partner, daughter, son — and give them a name. A birth date makes birthdays appear in Events, and the gender you choose sets the colour of their card. Save, and they appear on the tree, connected to you.
Do this for your parents, your partner and your children. Five or six people is enough to make the tree feel real; the rest can come over the following weeks, and other family members can add their own branches once they’re in.
2. Grow outwards from each card
The tree grows from whoever you’re looking at. Open your mother’s card and add her parents, sisters and brothers; open your partner’s card and add their side. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews, step-parents and in-laws are all available as relationships, so the tree can hold the family you actually have.
When a relationship goes through someone who isn’t on the tree yet — a cousin needs an aunt or uncle — Kunbaa adds an unnamed placeholder in the gap. Name them when you know.
3. Put faces on it
Open a card and add a photo. Faces on the tree are what make a grandparent stop scrolling. For relatives who have passed, add a death date, or turn on Passed away, date unknown if nobody remembers it — their card is marked gently, and they stay on the tree where they belong. See marking a relative as passed away.
4. Look at it from anyone’s place
The tree opens at home: your parents’ row, with you ringed and centred, your siblings beside you and your children below. Press and hold any card and a ring of actions blooms around it — View from redraws the tree from that person’s place, Parents and Children step a generation up or down, and Profile, Add, Edit, Invite or Message and More do what they say. Pinch and pan to move around; the line above the tree tells you whose family you are looking at and how many people and generations it holds.
A chip beside it switches to a partner’s side — Kiran’s side — so in-laws are one tap away rather than hidden behind a marriage. The flower button at the bottom right switches modes: All, Paternal (the father’s line), Maternal (the mother’s line), and Relation, which shows how two people on the tree are connected to each other.
5. Invite people to their own place
A person on the tree and a person with a Kunbaa account are the same thing once you connect them. Open a relative’s card and tap Invite — when they accept, their account links to the card you made, with the photos, birthday and stories already attached. Before the invite goes, you choose what they can do — add to the tree and post, or just look — and you can change it later from their profile. See how to invite your family and member permissions and access levels.
Fixing mistakes
Open the card, edit the name, dates or relationship, and save. Everyone in the family sees the correction — it’s one shared tree, not a copy each. Your own card is the family record; the name written beside your posts and chats is your preferred name, which you set once and which follows you whichever way you sign in.
If two branches of the family have been building separately, ask us at support@kunbaa.com and we’ll help bring them together.
Questions families ask
Do relatives need an account to be on the tree?
No. Anyone can be added as a person on the tree — grandparents, children, relatives who have passed. An account is only needed for someone to open Kunbaa themselves; you can invite them later and their invite links to the place you already made for them.
Can I add my partner's side of the family?
Yes. Add your partner, then add their parents, siblings and grandparents from your partner's card. The tree grows in every direction, not just up from you.
What if I don't know a grandparent's name yet?
Add what you know and come back. When you add a relative Kunbaa reaches through someone else — an aunt needs a grandparent, a cousin needs an aunt or uncle — it creates an unnamed placeholder for the missing person, which you (or anyone in the family) can name later.
Can children be on the tree?
Yes — as people, added and looked after by the adults in the family. Kunbaa accounts are for adults (18 and over); children appear on the tree and in photos without an account of their own.
Can two of us build the tree at the same time?
Yes. It is one shared tree — everyone sees the same one — and anyone with Can post access (or the Add people to the tree permission) can add relatives and fix mistakes. An admin can keep a relative on View only if they'd rather just look.
Can I import a GEDCOM file from Ancestry or MyHeritage?
Yes, on the website. Export your tree as a GEDCOM file, open kunbaa.com in a browser and go to Tools → Import a GEDCOM: Kunbaa matches the file against the people already on your tree and shows you exactly what it will write before it writes anything. The people appear in the app straight away. GEDCOM export is not switched on yet. The details are in Importing a GEDCOM file.